


Steady Now

by Iambic



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Modern AU, Offscreen Public Sex, Panic Attacks, Wham Splat Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 17:03:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4969123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When panic catches up to Dorian in an unfamiliar city, it seems rather a stretch to find a familiar face. And yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steady Now

**Author's Note:**

> [sometrashland](http://sometrashland.tumblr.com) tagged me with “unsteady” at 10.02 CEST on October 9th. I clocked in a half hour late. Whoops?
> 
> This takes place within a larger story I haven't written, but the context isn't precisely necessary here.

The hand suddenly at his back spreads heat even through Dorian’s admittedly light jacket. He staggers, unwilling, but leans back against it and remains upright. For a long second or two he allows himself the comfort of the simple touch, even from a stranger, and how embarrassing that he should be so untethered and touch-starved as to crave it rather than to object. But his knees have regained stability, and instead of relying on a stranger he steps away, and turns around.

Not quite a stranger, it seems. The Iron Bull grins down at him, arm still extended. Absurd. Dorian has no intention of falling again.

“What are the odds?” says the Bull. “And here I hadn’t even called you.”

He hasn’t. Not that Dorian’s been checking his phone periodically to know for sure. “Well.” His voice, horribly, comes just as weak as his knees have been. At least he’s spared the further embarrassment of responding to the Bull the same way. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Some kind of teasing quip should no doubt follow, and Dorian braces for it. But the Bull frowns instead and looks him over, and though he finally lowers his hand he does so slowly. “You don’t sound drunk.”

Dorian laughs, helplessly and high-pitched. His heartbeat, which had begun to fall, speeds up again with a vengeance, and his head goes light again. “No, no, not drunk, not yet. Just having – a moment—”

The Bull catches him before Dorian even notices he’s stumbling again, but he still falls against the Bull’s chest. Bare! Does he never wear a shirt? Is he simply doing the world a service in showing his deliciously large figure in detail? Dorian ought to pull away and attempt to stand again, but perhaps he’s better off admitting defeat and letting himself enjoy the situation he’s fallen – hah! – into. His chest has tightened again, his heart now pounding to the point of pain, and the Bull is so warm against him.

“Easy,” the Bull is saying, “easy now, it’s all right, I’ve got you.”

“You have, haven’t you?” Dorian can’t avoid another burst of somewhat hysterical laughter. “Perhaps you’d be better off without.”

A hesitation where there ought to have been a reply, and then the Bull tips Dorian’s head back to make eye contact. It’s still rather awkward. Dorian allows his eyes to glance away to the cement below, the building walls to either side, the streetlights beyond the alleyway. Unfamiliar, all. “Dorian,” says the Bull at last, and Dorian takes a useless breath and meets his eye again.

“I should hate,” Dorian begins, then pauses to swallow down the panic in his throat, “I should hate to inconvenience you.”

The Bull’s hand on his chin wanders down, around Dorian’s neck, to support his head and neck. The arm around his waist rubs slow circles. “Dorian. I’m not going to let you stumble off on your own. Don’t worry about me.”

Dorian attempts a scoff. It’s largely unsuccessful. “And why should I worry about you?”

“Not really sure,” the Bull says, “but hey, there it is. It’s sweet. But I’m not the one having the panic attack.”

Panic attack. Dorian hadn’t ever considered it, since his flight from Tevinter. Good, honest terror accounted for his near-constant dysfunction then. But the Bull looks so certain, and so concerned. Gentle hands. Where is that smug flirt from last time, who’d had his hands on Dorian’s ass before they even introduced themselves? Gone now. This Bull is too serious – too damn aware.

“I’m fine,” Dorian snaps, or does his best to. “I don’t need—”

The Bull sighs. “Dorian. Just call it a favour. I’ll make it up to you.”

For a moment Dorian watches the Bull’s face, stricken and unsure what he’s looking for, but all he sees is that concern. This is a bad idea, letting his guard down to a Qunari, of all people, a man who had fucked him once against a wall on a night like this, right where anyone could have seen them. Where someone had seen them. That the Bull had taken care of him then, too, is not the point.

There is a difference between admission and acceptance, though, so Dorian says nothing as he relaxes into the Bull’s hold. The Bull hums low and resonant, and Dorian finally feels the panic begin to ebb.

-

The Bull hails a cab, while Dorian leans against him, still shaky but coherent again. Casual touching Dorian has done before, though not enough for the thrill to wear off, but it was never in such a platonic setting. Not with a lover. The Bull’s arm holds him gently but never suggests, and when Dorian looks up the Bull is only ever smiling.

“Gotta say, when I thought about you falling into my arms again,” the Bull says, “this wasn’t exactly what I pictured.”

“Ah, well,” Dorian replies, voice steady by now, “there’s always next time.”

“There’s a next time, now?” The Bull is downright grinning, which should not be nearly so comforting.

Dorian teases up a corner of his mouth. “If you play your cards right, I suppose anything is possible.”

The cabby who picks them up speaks halting Orlesian in a Rivaini accent, so Dorian takes the liberty of replying in the man’s primary tongue. This sparks a conversation about which quirks of Val Royeaux they find the oddest, and it calms Dorian further, being outsiders together. All the while the Bull keeps an arm around his waist.

As Dorian relaxes inch by inch, though, his thoughts turn back down familiar paths. The lights that pass through the cab periodically illuminate the Bull’s striking profile and then go dark, and Dorian rests flush against him, hand so chastely at his waist when it could so easily trail lower. A specific thing to fixate upon, but Dorian suddenly wants that specific touch, just that, and his body wakes up to the wanting.

He readjusts his seated position, pressing just that much closer, never asking or giving a thing more away. The Bull rubs at his side briefly, but when Dorian looks up and the next lights flash by, the Bull smiles like he’s known all along. A miracle: he strokes down Dorian’s side, waist to hip, and then curls his thumb up to rest at the crease between torso and thigh. Dorian shivers as his cock begins to stir in anticipation alone.

The trip takes all of fifteen minutes and brings them to a small and unremarkable apartment building. The Bull passes the cabby his card before Dorian can fumble free his wallet, and so Dorian wishes the man well and closes the door behind him.

It’s no fancy neighbourhood, but the sidewalk has been maintained and cleaned, and across the street a line of trees borders a small park. From somewhere within Dorian can smell night-blooming jasmine with a brief pang of nostalgia. But he has a distraction when the Bull steps up behind him and the cab drives off into the night.

“You’re standing in the road,” the Bull murmurs into his ear, as Dorian tries not to collapse all over again for the heat that washes through him.

He takes a slow breath. “If you’ve an alternative in mind, I’m all ears.”

The Bull chuckles and turns his face up – bites Dorian’s ear, hard enough to elicit a gasp. Dorian jerks back, only to feel the Bull half hard against him. “Fuck,” says the Bull. “Let’s get upstairs before I just take you on the sidewalk.”

A joke, most likely, but Dorian shivers anyway. The thought of being seen, no consequence other than the potential outrage, hits him almost harder than the Bull’s promise to fuck him. “By all means,” Dorian replies, hoarse and unsure which option he just responded to.

The stairs take some time, mostly because once initiated they have a difficult time keeping their hands off each other. Three landings up the Bull presses Dorian against a wall and grinds against him while Dorian writhes beneath and bites what skin he can reach, shoulders and neck and jaw and lips. Dorian moans softly, because he can, and the Bull’s breath hitches as he pulls away.

The Bull’s voice husks. “Two flights of stairs left,” he says, but he dips his fingers under the waistband of  Dorian’s pants like he can’t help himself.

When Dorian laughs there’s too much breath in it. “If you keep that up, I’m not going anywhere.”

Slowly the Bull takes his hands away. “Got to admit, I’m tempted.” Then he crooks a grin. “Condoms and lube upstairs, though.”

There’s incentive enough.

They barely make it through the door.

-

Here, now: the Bull’s wide and monstrous pants unbelted and unzipped but somehow holding on, Dorian’s shirt only just shaken free of his arms, both of them hard and straining. Dorian gets a hand around – the Bull’s jock strap, Maker, but it’s surely necessary if he’s out in the day doing whatever he does when he’s not wrecking Dorian for the rest of Dorian’s likely short life. It must be agony for the Bull in there, is the point. But Dorian has never called himself a kind man, and rather than free the Bull’s cock from its confines, he palms it, squeezes and loosens. Above and around him, the Bull groans, thrusting into Dorian’s hand and curling fingers in Dorian’s hair tight enough to hurt. When Dorian allows his head to be turned, the Bull bites down hard on his neck.

It’s all fuck, Dorian, and please and touch me and just you wait; gasps, groans, sharp exhales. The Bull wrenches Dorian’s hand away to pin him by both hands and bite down his jaw and the other side of his neck. Dorian can already feel the bruises forming. It’s safe here, miraculously, where no one knows he exists but the Bull, so he cries out and lets the Bull hear him even when he isn’t compelled, just for the joy of it. That, and the way the Bull curses and bites even harder.

“I want you,” says Dorian, and the Bull raises his head to stare back with dilated pupil, “in me, now, I want—”

“Fuck,” says the Bull again, like he can’t help himself, “anything, fuck, you’re gorgeous, Dorian…”

When he lets go, Dorian nearly stumbles again. Instead of holding him upright, though, the Bull picks him up altogether to Dorian’s yelp. “Presumptuous!” he snaps, but his face just wants to smile, and the Bull just leans down to kiss him open-mouthed and messy. When they part, Dorian gives up on pretending not to enjoy himself.

The Bull carries him all the way to the bedroom, tiny thing it is, and lays him down on the bed that takes up most of the space within. Instead of digging out supplies, though, the Bull follows to straddle his hips and kiss him again, all heat and sudden slowness. Dorian yanks at those striped abominations still covering the Bull’s legs, and the Bull laughs into his mouth but lifts himself for Dorian to deal with them. Dorian’s hands stay trapped; he resorts to using his feet to shove them free.

His own pants, next, but the Bull doesn’t seem inclined to do the honors or even let go Dorian’s wrists. He tends to Dorian’s mouth instead, biting down on Dorian’s lips before soothing them with his tongue, opening wide enough to engulf Dorian before pulling both their lips near shut again. But when Dorian tries to grind up against him, the Bull only pins him heavier.

Eventually the Bull does pull back with a ridiculous and not at all endearing grin, and Dorian seizes his chance. “What part of now are you failing to understand?”

“Sorry,” says the Bull, who looks not sorry at all. “Think I got distracted.”

“That much was obvious,” Dorian replies, but it’s hard to get mad about it. Knowing he gets to the Bull as much as the Bull gets to him—well, it’s satisfying in a deep-burning kind of way. Unusual, perhaps, but pleasant. “If you’ll get back on schedule I suppose I can find it in myself to forgive you.”

The Bull laughs, but there’s something off to it. He’s climbing off Dorian, though, and off of the bed. And—of course he keeps lube and condoms on the windowsill. Through all the desperate arousal, there’s still room for a wave of fondness to come crashing through Dorian’s chest, and he’d absolutely object were there any more room for sensation there. He gets rid of the rest of his clothing instead around the same kind of lightness as, the same as before, in the midst of panic—

In an instant he freezes. But this is absurd, that the panic could return simply by invoking its name, the vortex wild and gaping through his core again all in an instant. The room yawns around him with the humid breath of a great beast despite its irrationality. Dorian clenches his hands into fists rather than following the instinct pressing him to reach for the Bull as some kind of anchor.

At least the Bull doesn’t take his time here, condoms—at least three!—in one hand, bottle in the air, and finally bereft of that awful jock strap. Dorian inhales and relaxes his hands on the exhale. “Bull.”

“Yeah, I got you,” the Bull says, suddenly gentle, and why should he pull back so? Except that he pulls closer, and still pins Dorian’s hands even with their fingers intertwined. He meets Dorian’s lips again and Dorian, immobilized far more than the Bull could ever cause, gasps and lets him in.

Dorian can’t touch him like before, so he rolls his hips and clings to the shock of pleasure that follows, his gasp echoed through the Bull. Keep going, keep going, keep going, but the Bull won’t break his slow rhythm. When the Bull bears down on him, Dorian groans as much from frustration as relief.

“Breathe, Dorian.”

“Must you drag it out so?” Dorian demands, but his voice comes thin and breathy.

The Bull lets go one hand to drag his knuckles down Dorian’s cheek. “You don’t need to rush it, you know,” he says, and smiles, and finally sits up to reach for and tear open a condom packet. “You’re working yourself up again. Let me bring you back down.”

“Must I beg?” Dorian tries not to let the sudden shame show through. He’s lived through this before, but for someone to witness it twice in a night, for the Bull to see it, is too much. But leaving this bed would take far more strength than that to bear it.

He watches the Bull open the lube bottle and squeeze a small pool into the hand with only two fingers, then rub both hands slick. “You don’t have to beg,” the Bull says, and beckons Dorian to him. “Only to ask.”

Dorian takes a breath and crawls forward into the Bull’s lap, rewarded immediately with the pressure of a blunt-nailed finger against his hole. Back in the alley, the Bull hadn’t laughed him off or left him alone, and he’d still very much wanted to fuck Dorian as soon as Dorian hinted at it, so perhaps. Perhaps.

As the Bull moves his fingers, around and out and back in, slowly adding a second, a third, Dorian lets himself make the smaller noises that aren’t part of the performance he’s mastered. He lets the Bull kiss him soft and languid, and rests his hands against the Bull’s warm chest.

Three fingers have Dorian writhing again, pushing back; the Bull’s other hand around Dorian’s cock arches his back. He’s gasping, breathing hard, but here again the Bull is all around him and against him and in him.

“Doing okay?” the Bull asks, and at Dorian’s nod withdraws his hand. He laughs, just a few chuckles, adds, “I could get used to this kind of hygiene.”

Dorian snorts. “You might acclimatize your cock as well, while you’re at it.”

The Bull beams back at him. “Ah, there you are again.”

Behind Dorian a condom wrapper tears, and then the Bull pushes Dorian up to his knees, his other hand hooking around to pull it on. Not to be left out, Dorian takes up the bottle of lube and anoints his own palm. The Bull smiles with only the hint of a wicked edge when Dorian reaches behind himself, and then loses it with a gasp when Dorian’s hand finds him and strokes him slick.

He lines up his cock, but lets Dorian lower himself onto it, and Dorian tries on a smile in return and takes his time sliding down onto him, centimeter after hard-won centimeter until they’re skin to skin again.

“I got you,” the Bull repeats, holding Dorian to him with slippery fingers as he begins to move them in achingly slow motion. Dorian, melting against him once again, might have to concede the point.

 


End file.
